


In the Company of Sentient Machines

by nachttour



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, darkfic a little, discussions of wanting to die, old trolls are old, therapy in space!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-29
Updated: 2016-08-29
Packaged: 2018-08-10 22:57:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7864765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nachttour/pseuds/nachttour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you to QuietServal for all of the beta help. You are the hero of this work and without you it would not have happened!</p></blockquote>





	In the Company of Sentient Machines

**Author's Note:**

  * For [awespic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/awespic/gifts).



Roxy pressed her face against the viewing window for Prospit4, enjoying the distant glimmer of other points in their frog. The universe around them hummed and shone with living space and all of it ran in the back of her mind like a news-ticker of the state of their creation. Making sure that her identicard was in clear view marking her as one of the facility staff she headed into the restricted hallways and out of the community area.  
   
Feferi’s idea to create a place where former psionic pilots could recuperate was pure genius. Some of the decor skewed nautical as a nod to her patronage. Roxy certainly enjoyed some of the fish-tanks that were built into the walls of the facility and that added a pleasant noise-texture to the omnipresent rush of air filters.  
   
Some coworkers nodded to her as they passed, others went on intent on their individual tasks. A few strode forward with purpose toward whatever emergency had most recently occurred. Ninety percent of the staff were human, with the rest being trolls bronze and under. Anyone above a gold tended to make the patients anxious on a level that was actively harmful to their recovery.  
   
Dave would be coming up soon. He commuted from the planet - taking Jade’s transportifiers between the moon-waystation and onto the station facility. It was technically his day off, but she wanted another player present for the troll that had most recently come to them. Certainly he could not begrudge her a day. It just meant that he would have three days off in a row to canoodle with his rage-factory and maybe have time to mix up a new set.  
   
The travel room lit up briefly with his passage and Dave stepped down from the transport pad and into the facility proper. Oozing around the corner she went in for the hug and connected with great success. Lingering for a second, she stepped back and looked him up and down.  
   
“Not feeling too woozy this time? I know you don’t love the pads. Sorry to call you on this one, but I think it’s definitely a player sitch that we are looking at.”  
   
Dave shook off her concern, adjusting his glasses and only looking a few shades paler than normal. “Nah. Getting the hang of the gravity fluxing situation thing. Mostly it’s just that bump in the middle where everything is literally pounds lighter and you’re walking on air and then BAM you are here and the establishment is literally pressing you down.”  
   
Roxy snorted, waiting for him to get his equipment delogged from his modus before proceeding out of the travel room and into the break room to get a cup of coffee. Redbull was a vanishingly rare commodity so she made do with the bean-water as her go-juice of choice. Redbull also reminded her a great deal of vodka which was a road best untraveled. “We’ve got a new one today.”  
   
“Yeah?”  
   
Roxy put her tablet down, guiding an identity window up. The troll in the turn-around projection jutted over the screen. She stared balefully forward, fang-torn lips settled into a rather furious leer. It was an unnerving expression. Powerful horns like those of the former rams of Earth curled around her jaw and jutted forward.  
   
Dave whistled low, sipping juice from the fridge and twirling his badge in his hands. The connector spun pleasantly, giving him something to fidget with. “She’s not really our department? Unless that is the Time Witch.” From the sound of his voice, Roxy presumed he already understood and was making his way to acquiescence.  
   
“That’s our gal.  Woman’s name is Damara Medigo. She has been registered dead for...a mind-bogglingly long time. For reals. Like, think arches and shit. And things made out of copper because iron was kind of a new situation.” At his skeptical glance, Roxy giggled and shook her head. “So not quite that old, but she is very, very old for a rust-blood.”  
   
“She’s a player, yeah?”  
   
“Yeah. Got her out of the same batch that Psi came out of.”  
   
Dave ran the leash of his badge through his fingers before putting it back around his neck where it belonged.“Suppose it makes sense why we got her then.”  
   
“Time shit.”  
   
“Yup.”    
   
The curling horns reminded them both strongly of Aradia. The fury and stress around her eyes was where the comparison stopped. Roxy glanced down at the tablet, shoulders rounded out in thought.  “Never encountered her. Not in the bubbles. What about you?”  
   
Dave poked the tablet with a finger, drawing it over to study it more thoroughly. “Nah. Just the better version of her. Aradia’s my girl, and I only met Dams once. It was on the meteor when some of our bubbles collided. Things were going bad -- Rose was drinking. Karkat and Gamzee were in the middle of the slow-motion-apocalypse-breakup, and she just kind of meandered on through, smiling all innocent. She creeped me out real bad.”  
   
Roxy shrugged. “I don’t think this version is anything like either Damara or Aradia. She’s just kind of uh- nonverbal. I think she might have burnout like Psii does, or maybe she just doesn’t feel chatty. We’ll have to see.”  
   
Rising from her seat she offered Dave a smile. “If I need you as an assist I might call.”  
   
Dave shot finger-pistols back at her, offering a little smile. “I’ll be your Huckleberry.”  
   
Waggling brows at Dave, Roxy grinned back at him. “Best believe it cowboy. Enjoy your juice, I’ll see you on the floor.”  
   
Clocking back in on her tablet Roxy made her way through the quiet hallways to get back to her rounds.  Sollux caught up with her the next hallway up, his proximity making her hair stand up slightly. Grinning at him, Roxy bumped shoulders by way of hello. “We got another player today.”    
   
“I know.”  
   
“I thought you couldn’t sense the future anymore?”  
   
Sollux’s cane skittered along in front of them. For reasons that did not bear examination, the game had brought him out still blind but otherwise whole. Lightly touching his elbow she alerted him to a floating patient and the pair of them stepped aside to let her pass.  
   
“I can’t. There’s this spooky thing called daily updates. I don’t know if you’ve heard of them. Also , the energy in the building is different.”    
   
“You don’t have to stay if you don’t feel it dude. I’ve got today.”  
   
“Mmm.” He snorted at her, unimpressed with her concern. “Psi and I have a session today. And I’m leading group for some of the younger ships.” Tilting his head at her, he let his feelings be known in the forms of sparks gently arcing between his dual sets of horns. “I’m not going to run screaming from a room just because there’s an old troll in the facility.”  
   
That lisp was killer, but Roxy understood her fellow player and therapist well enough. Sollux only worked once or twice a week. He would not have been the first troll that she chose to deal with others but it made him happy and she was not the sort of girl to rain on anyone’s parade.  He and his Ancestor spent time together at least once a week and he had the right combination of fatalism and patience to listen to the others that he worked with. Out of the group of them that had exited the game, he also uniquely had the skillset to deal with rogue psychics. Dude sort of seemed like a living Faraday cage. Tantrums and anxiety attacks did not have the same explosive results when he was working with individuals or a group.  
   
Coming out of the game had been a shock. The end-game prize that stretched out before them was as glorious as it was complicated. The trials of setting up a society were ongoing, but things had swung to the better side of the spectrum. Feferi and Karkat spent their time governing the troll populations and working with the senate of consorts, carapaces and humans that held sway during daylight hours.  
   
One of Feferi’s contributions as a life player was reanimating those that could be salvaged out of the void. She and Equius had been looking for something completely different and instead produced Horrus Zahhak, the elder. The goal in the original searches had been to find masters of technology, as well as archival materials that had not transferred to the new world. They had not considered that some of those records would arrive in the form of individuals. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason regarding what Ancestors would show up in those efforts. Not every attempt produced an individual.  
   
It had been a lucky mistake that allowed for the first rescue, and one that they continued to exploit to return the rest of the players. All of the Dancestors had been returned to life.  Kankri was an education specialist on one of the stations, explaining the function and purpose of the site to the public. The other trolls had integrated into society in ways that best suited them. Meenah’s presence made Roxy deeply uncomfortable, but biology did not equate to destiny.  
   
One of the attempts that Roxy had worked on as an assisting Void player produced the pilot of the Battleship Condescension. Long discussion had gone on about what would be done and what the correct action to take was.  
   
It had been Sollux who walked over to the console on the antiquated dreadnaught and asked. The pilot’s answer was branded into her memory.  
   
[ get them out. 2et them free. then let me diie. ]  
   
Further prompting revealed that he was referring the ships of the Alternian fleet. Many of them had been stranded out in the wider parts of the Empire’s galactic territory during the vast glub and the psychic shock had killed their crews but left them adrift and alone. The technology keeping the pilots alive had overridden the killing-shock of the event.  Without orders and maintenance they slowly broke down drifting through the blackness of space.    
   
Sollux rested claws in the juncture of her elbow and the prick of their sharp tips brought her into the present.  
   
“Sorry babe! I was thinking about your main man. He been doing okay in your one-on-ones?”  
   
Turning to face her, he shrugged. “He’s Psi. If you know him at all you know what that looks like.”  
   
The sheer weight of time and slavery that the troll had borne staggered her mind and simultaneously rekindled her burning hatred of the Condescension. Putting Dirk’s sword through her back had been the most carthritic and exhilarating experiences of her life. The crunch of her back-plates giving against the pressure of furious steel was still crystal clear in her mind.  
   
“I do have an inkling.” Scrubbing a hand through her hair, Roxy asked the question that had been plaguing her for a long while.  
   
“Sollux, if you don’t find this too much of an intrusion - and if you do you can just tell me to kick rocks and I’ll do it - why did you start doing therapy in the first place?”  
   
Her fellow counselor pursed his lips briefly, sliding his arm in through hers and letting her guide him through the more populous parts of the hallway. Closer to the patient’s rest spaces there was a higher density of staff. Technicians, a small smattering of helmstechs, doctors, and other support staff, all buzzed through the space like bees.  
   
“It helps.” He folded his cane in with a decisive click, letting it dangle from the wrist strap attached to the handle. “It lets me do something useful too. You can only sit around in your hive for so long making pissant programmers cry before you have to find something else to make you laugh.”  
   
Roxy could not resist needling at him just a little. Dude practically screamed ‘come at me’ in his body language and the dull superiority that seeped through all of his declarations of skill. “You’ve never managed to bring me to tears, I’m still waiting for the day that you manage it.”  
   
Flexing his claws in into her skin so that four tiny stars of blood blossomed along her elbow, he smirked at her. “You haven’t seen me try yet.” Once a group of arguing phlebotomists cleared the way Sollux re-extended his cane. “We have a friend.”  
   
The troll behind them was tall enough that Roxy should not have missed her. Turning and glancing at the Handmaid, she grinned. “Hey girl. Bored of being in your room?”  
   
The troll inclined her head minutely, arms folded around her waist and eyes slit into shimmering red crescents. Her ambient fields made the air around them shiver. At her left Sollux’s eye twitched, his blue eye shimmering at a different rate than the red.  
   
Roxy had read that troll kinetics came in a variety of flavors. Their free-range patient had the force-variety that was common in the gold-blooded caste but without the adroitness toward electronics. Preliminary scans showed that her resting potential for force was frightening. She did not feel like showing off that latent ability though, having been thus far contented with watching the staff bustling around her.  
   
“So here’s the situation then. We’re heading in to chill with a buddy of mine. He mostly doesn’t care who’s in his room, but if he says no then you’re going to have to stay outside. That cool with you?”  
   
Damara watched her without offering a reply. A few strands of her hair shifted near the curve of her jaw.  
   
“Ooookay then.” Roxy sighed to herself and headed to the annex that held the pass-through to the Psiioniic’s room. Out of respect for the troll, most staff were not allowed access without card and patient authorization. It had been agreed upon early that personal space and autonomy needed to be respected wherever possible, while allowing for a routine that would not upset the helmsmen accustomed to it.  Scanning her ID, the antechamber to the Psiioniic’s space opened.  
   
The room had been decorated in golds and blacks, decorations mirrored in intentional symmetry on either side. Roxy found the room slightly off putting, as if by simply stepping into it she was upsetting the balance. The terminal that she would need to access for the next part was also a restricted point but this was her guy and she knew he trusted her enough to grant her access.  
   
“Good evening! It’s me and Captor-minor. I have one of my other patients with me too. She won’t bother you, but if you would prefer she stay outside that’s cool too dude. Your call.” Above her head cameras focused in on her and zoomed. Beaming upward to them she wiggled her fingers hello.  
   
“Do we have permission to come into your space? I’m going to be making adjustments to your supportive equipment and if you feel up to talking I would like to do a check-in with you and see if there is anything we can do to make you more comfortable. If nah, then me and my girl Dams will head on out and you and Sollux can chill.”  
   
The previously red-light on the Psiioniic’s door flicked to green and Roxy proceeded in.  
   
*  
   
Damara followed the human because it pleased her to do so. The room they had installed her in was pleasant enough. A luxurious pile of pillows and some solid materials lay aimed across from the wide flexi-glass portal facing the moon the station orbited. Orderlies had brought her tea that was almost like something from home. The glut of humans confused her as this point in time was one that she had never arrived at. Her sense of the order of things told her that this was a different timeline from the one that she belonged in. The tributary of causality rushed along strong and quick, indicating that this eventuality was stable enough.  
   
The wiggler-empress had breathed life into her, her young lips pressed briefly against her own. The Rogue of Void lived up to her name in her actions, plucking her into this world with the Heir’s help. Like a piece of treasure stolen from a crypt she had been stolen from death. Air flowed through her lungs, the clamor of life pressed against her aurals, and she seethed at the imposition of it.  
   
The room that the Rogue and the Mage entered felt like another world. The frequency of the psionic dwelling within it caused her bones to vibrate. The individual they stood near was a peer the like of which she had not met save when the Faceless Assassin of Joy had introduced her to Sn0wman. The woman with a galaxy inside of her had understood. The shimmer of stars across her cheeks and the nova-slow pulse of light behind her eyes had told Damara everything that she might need to know of the elusive member of the Doc’s gang.  
   
The troll in front of her reclined in shambles. Set up in a support-pile with his arms resting looped over his chair and above his head out of what seemed to be long habit, he reeked of the stretching degradation of time. Helmstech was a cruel and precise science. It guaranteed that the body stayed hale and whole long beyond anything it ought to have been capable of.  
   
The Psiioniic - that is what the Rogue called him - watched her with no attention spared for the others moving through his space. Recognition lit in his eyes and his mouth split in a long and subtle smile. The voice that passed his lips was haggard with disuse - his syllables a mash of growl and buzz.  
   
“Maid I have waited so long that I thought you would never come. Perhaps I strayed too far from the world and you couldn’t find me. The stars are not supposed to be outside of your reach. I am disappointed.”  
   
Stalking over, skirts whispering around her ankles, Damara pressed a finger against the Psiioniic’s neck, directly over his Imperial branding. Beneath his skin his pulse beat away -- oblivious to the fact that the time for such things had long since passed. A Witch had claws in him and that sort of interference would not be easily undone. Ropes of scar tissue circled his neck, dipping presumably into the pilot suit that covered the rest of him. Peering past his wild curls and into the shimmer of his eyes, she smirked at him.  
   
“I decide when and if I come for those who belong to me. It was not your time.”  
   
The Psiioniic nudged at her, charge traveling up her arms and floofing her hair out. Snorting at him she pushed back, watching her red mix in with hers and amplify with contact.  
   
“I will come for you later.” Turning and looking at her Rogue minder, she folded her arms back around herself. “I am going back to my room now.” No one attempted to bar her departure. The pilot remained in his nest, watching her retreat with the patient certainty of one who had long awaited death.  
   
*  
   
“So they call you The Handmaid. You don’t really seem like the kind of gal that will do anything that someone tells you to. Sort of an in-charge kind of a broad if you get my meaning. Is that the title you picked after Ascension?” Dave sat as far from her as he could physically be while still being close enough to converse.  
   
Damara turned toward the young Knight and shook her head, amused by his fear. He ought to be afraid. “You don’t understand.”  
   
“No. No I really don’t understand and I don’t know that I ever will understand. Do you remember things about the game?”  
   
“Do you, Dave Strider?”  She chuckled as his hand went up to his identification card and he self-consciously turned it so that his information was no longer facing her. As if that would somehow keep him safe. As if she did not already know him the same way that she knew all of them.  
   
“I do.” That caught her interest. The Strider humans were a notoriously pent-up bunch. They spoke volumes without revealing anything of substance.  
   
“I do too.” This much she could give him. Rubbing the ends of her bangs between her fingers Damara closed her eyes. “I remember everything.”  
   
“Every timeline? Even the ones that you died?”  
   
“I never did.” Damara fixed him with a stare that held the weight of her fury. “I was engaged in a contract that I could not escape. I am not the Damara that played. I am someone else. I was someplace else.”  
   
Dave locked his jaw, eyes darting over her like a prey-beast sussing out the mood of a predator.  
   
“You were the girl that was stuck with Scratch, weren’t you?”  
   
Bristling at his name, Damara stared down at the table and willed herself not to make him come apart at the joints. It was a wiggler’s question. These delicate little grubs had no conception of what her life had been. Were it not for the continually pleasant food and the ability to do as she liked, her needles would have fit nicely into his eyes.    
   
“Yes.”  
   
Wise little grub that he was, Dave dropped that line of questioning. “I’m sorry.”  
   
Another surprise to join the first. The humans seemed to be full of them. Dave was staring into his beverage in a pointed attempt not to irritate her. “We didn’t have a way to ask if any of you wanted to come back. Not that we really could sort of scream into the void and just holler ‘Yo, who wants to join the life bus? Party’s going on right now admission is free, by the way we don’t know how fucked up you’re going to come out, but you can come if you want!”  
   
“Poor planning, Dave.” She purred at him, baring her fangs. Sparks of her energy flared and died in the air, reflected in his glasses.  
   
“Well, it’s kind of on you now. You are free to do what you want with yourself however you want to do it. The only rules here are that you not aggress against the other patients and that if you are going to hurt yourself you try and talk to one of us first.” Dave looked at her, gaining confidence as he slipped into the persona that he wore at work. The sobbing adolescent that she had seen on the beat-mesa from the blackened scaffolding of his world was not in attendance.  
   
“I have felt enough pain. I do not wish for more.” Smiling lusciously, she purred in a more welcoming manner. “Unless you wish to give it to me. I would not mind that so much.”  
   
Dave’s hands flew up as he physically scooted his chair backward. The metal legs dragged along the ceramic tiled floor with a satisfying screech. “Nope. I am not qualified to do anything of the sort. Only helping here, not hurting. Consensual or no, this is not the right kind of doctor’s office.”  
   
Chittering in glee, Damara rounded her shoulders down so that her rumblespheres strained the fabric of her dress. “Are you sure Dave Strider? You could make me scream. I could make you scream.”  
   
The color rushing into his face was as beautiful as it was alien. “No. No screaming, no crying, nothing like that. Just nice, therapeutic, chill living here.” The human mumbled to himself, chugging down the last of his beverage. “I wasn’t even supposed to be here, this is not the way I was supposed to be spending Thursday.”  
   
“No. It was with your Knight was it not?”  
   
Now that she was present in time, the familiar tangle of time opened before her actions branching into an explosion of other options in the soft focus of the corners of her eyes. Dave stared back at her, gears silently turning inside of his ribs. He could feel it just like she could.  
   
“That had been the plan. Should I have stayed home? I mean, for a spooky babe you are a kick in the pants. I wouldn’t want to miss you unless it was for something big.”  
   
“I could do that for you too~ Kick you in the pants if you refuse to hurt me.”  To her abject disappointment the Knight controlled his embarrassment.  Sobering, she shook her head.  
   
“Nothing I can see says that you needed to be anywhere else other than here.”  
   
*  
   
Shoulder-deep in the equipment for Psii’s support equipment, Roxy listened to her two new favorite trolls. Damara Megido was as terrifying as she was hilarious. Given to long silences interspersed with acerbic bursts, she followed Roxy around like a ghost.  
   
“What will you do now that you are here with the aliens?” The Handmaid lounged on one of the visitor’s piles in the Psiioniic’s room, twitching a slipper-shod toe and orbiting a pair of pliers around her fingers. They shimmered with red light and rotated around one of her immaculately manicured claws. One of the techs had obliged in doing them for her, smoothing lacquer along them in neat, slow strokes.  
   
“Wait for you to do your job.” No official recording existed with the Battleship Condescension’s hatch-name. Psii seemed overly content to remain Psii and did not wish to claim any other form of address. The Handmaid snorted at him.  
   
“Who decided that it was my job to bring death? Flattering as that is. What a boring fate.” Emphasizing her statement with a theatrical yawn Damara snapped her fangs shut with a pronounced click.  
   
Roxy marveled at her voice -- deep and low like someone who had been in theatre for years. There was a trace of an accent in her speech, but her diction reminded her sharply of the First Guardian that Rose had discussed with her.  
   
“Everyone knows that the Maid visits you when it is time.” Psii rolled his eyes at her. “Did you not read your part in the script?”  
   
“Your pan is awfully cooperative for someone who has had it fried as often as you have.”  
   
“Suck it.”  
   
“Present it and I will.” Damara leered back at him, grinning with all of her fangs on display.  
   
Psii shook his head vaguely. “I don’t know why my pan isn’t scrambled any longer. I don’t know why I am here either.”  
   
“Because you are a toy who has been dropped on the floor. We both are. And now they are done with us.”  
   
“Witches.”  Roxy colored inside of her compartment, having been caught talking over the other two. Backing out and smiling at the pair of trolls she collected her toolbox, thinking that it was the better part of valor to let them speak on their own. “If you wanted a strict answer to your question. We have a Witch of Life, and she brought you back.”  
   
“And who,” The Handmaid ventured, her voice as cold as space, “thought that was a good idea?”  
   
Roxy had no answer. Finishing the collection of her tools she fled the room with as much dignity as she could muster.  
   
Left alone, Damara turned back to the Psiioniic. “I do not believe she had a good answer for me.”  
   
“You should be nice to them. They try so hard.” The tone of the Psiioniic’s voice did not agree with the words coming out of his mouth.  
   
“They try so hard and they still ruin things.”  Looking down at the shimmering paint spread out over her claws, she stared at the ex-pilot.  “You never answered my question. I will not kill you. You are interesting. What will you do?”  
   
Psii laid his head back into the pile, sparks dancing along the lines of his curls and making a corona around his angular face. “Contemplate for-fucking-ever, much like I have for the earlier majority of my shithole of a life. Then die. Maybe. God I hope I die. If I can’t I’ll find a way to throw myself into a sun. That might do it. ”  
   
“What a boring way to spend all of that time.” Spilling herself back into the pile, the Handmaid kicked her feet up to rest on the wall. It was hypocritical of her to say anything of the sort to him. His words were the same ones that had run through her pan a thousand times.  
   
“You can only see things so many times before they lose their appeal. I have passed by novas, I have touched the tits of the most incredible bitch in the entire galaxy. I have lived ten and ten again times as long as I ever expected that I would. I have worked under the worst and the best command staff in our whole empire. I have seen lives-”  
   
“-beyond lives play out over and over again. All relationships in all variations. Tears, betrayal, love, strife, and death.” The Handmaid spoke over him, arms flung out over her head in a mirroring of his posture. “I know.”  
   
“If you know then you would want it to stop too.” Psii watched her through slit eyes, pulse disturbingly apparent against the thin skin of his throat. The plating there was so soft there that one flick of her claws would give him what he wanted, assuming that the wound did not heal.  
   
“It did.” Damara closed her eyes, feeling the trident pass through her thorax for the umpteenth time and reliving the giddy relief at the ending of her toil. She had fought the Condescension in fair combat, and finally the Empress had won.  
   
“They pulled me back.” The hurt in his voice was old, laced through with veins of anger. “I didn’t want to come back. I wanted to stay with them. I earned it.”  
   
Damara tilted her head to face Psii. “Your cohort? Your crew? What in death was so sumptuous that it could compare to all of this?”  Sweeping an arm in sarcastic wonderment she let it fall back to the floor with a dull thump. The Psiioniic shook his head. Finding her way to her feet, Damara approached him. The frequency of his psi sung high and powerful in her head. They were competing wavelengths -- the sound they made discordant and powerful.  
   
“You were property.” Tracing a claw around the perimeter of the visible brand on the Psiioniic’s neck, she tolerated the wash of irritated sparks that rushed along her arms. Pain, like all things, was relative. “Don’t you wish to be free now?”  
   
“To what great effect sugartits? The beach I wanted to flay apart with my mind is as dead as we were. Everyone that I ever knew or who could possibly have known them is dust.” The Psiioniic growled low in his chest, fingers flexing into the material of the pile.  
   
“You have an adorable descendant. And humans. The humans seem... nice.” Curling her lip at the whole of the idea, Darmara stroked her forefinger lightly along the Psiioniic’s throat, following the lines of his tendons.  
   
“Stop touching me!”  
   
She skidded backward a few feet, well out of range after a psi-assisted shove. Smirking lopsidedly, she tisked at him. “If you want death so bad you would let me do what I wish. There is some fight left in you yet. If you are a troll at all, there is always some fight left.” Ruminating on her companion she continued. “Or maybe it is simply the joy of being able to say no. You should stay a while with me and say it more.”  
   
“If you have been locked into servitude for anything near the amount of time it is rumored you have been then you would understand just how great it feels to tell someone to get fucked.”  
   
“Then say it to my face pilot.” Damara purred at him from the middle of the room, staring into his face and watching the flux of emotion cross over it.  
   
“Get the fuck out of my block.”  
   
Turning on her heel and peering over her shoulder at him, she smirked. “Forever?”  
   
“Until I invite you back.” Flashing fangs at her in return, Psii settled back into his pile.  
   
*  
   
“Why were you aggravating Psii?”  
   
Roxy sat behind her, running a brush slowly through the length of her hair. It felt nice, to be the one cared for for once.  “He needs to be aggravated.”  
   
“I don’t really think that’s the case. The whole idea of this place is to chill, to heal-”  
   
“Marinating in ennui is not healing. It is stagnating. If he wishes to be well, he will need to chase after it, not let himself rot.”  
   
“Are you speaking about yourself or the Psiionic? Because some rough stuff happened to that dude. I know it’s normal by Alternian standards, but those standards are insane.”  
   
Let her find peace from the platitudes of these children. “You don’t say.”  
   
Roxy’s hands faltered and then continued their task. “What I mean by that is that maybe you use soft-claws on him at first. Dude’s not as badass as you.”  
   
_And you assume that I am that much tougher. Or that he somehow is weak._ Her human finished braiding her hair and decisively tucked a barrette into it, holding it out of the way. Keeping her thoughts to herself, Damara rose. Slipping forward in time she stood in front of the Psiioniic’s doorway and peered at his entryway cameras.  
   
“Am I allowed back in?”  
   
“Are you going to keep your fronds to yourself?”  
   
“Unless I am invited to place them on you, yes.”  
   
The doors slid open and the Handmaid found her customary position on the pile across from Psii’s. Not feeling particularly aggressive she let the silence stretch. Both of them had practice with long periods of stillness.  
   
“What was it like?”  
   
“Hmm?” Damara turned to face the pilot who had risen from his customary place to float over. His gauntness reminded her of the dead that she saw when she was younger.  
   
“What was it like, serving a first guardian?” The Psiioniic’s toe-claws pointed down near the floor. Depending on her mood she was similarly disinclined to stand.  
   
“Tedious. Frustrating. What was it like piloting a ship? Did you get to make any decisions on your own at all? Or were they all made for you?” ”  
   
One of his fore-fangs was longer than the other and it showed when he smiled. The fact was so endearing that it startled her.  “Helmstaff made ninety percent of those decisions.” The light around them fluxed in time with the pulsing of the Psiioniic’s eyes.  
   
“It was tedious and boring. Like if you try to stretch your arms out but they only go this far.”  By way of demonstration the ex-pilot lifted his arms parallel to his body, barely inches from flush to his ribs.  

“Mm. I know that feeling well enough.” Looking up at him she scooted over to make room for the long line of the troll floating over her. 

“If we are doing this, we are doing it properly. Get down here.” Her order startled a snorting laugh out of him. 

“What is it that you think we are doing?” 

Droll and in no mood for coquettishness, she deadpanned at him.  “We are ‘jamming it out’ are we not? Or do I get to see if it is true that gemini-trolls have two of everything?” Flirting was as easy as breathing - another thing to provoke outrage and put her partners off-kilter. 

The Psiioniic hung in the air, watching her with inscrutable shimmering eyes. Slowly, he dropped himself into the pile on his side. “It’s a one-off. I just want to get my hands on your face.” 

“Of course.” Darmara rolled to face him. “Your lovers are long dead and your context with them. I never had nor wanted any to start with.” 

The smile that he offered her was savage, all fangs and no softness. “That’s fucking right.” 

He reached out and cupped her face, the temperate warmth of his palm pressing against the flat of her cheek. The angry buzz of stress started to recede against the skin-prickling pleasure of what was going to be a pap. Focusing on the sensation, she closed her eyes. “Full hand. Touch my temples.” 

“I like a woman that knows what she likes.” The amusement thrum he made from her order heightened the shiver-quiet of the pile. His fore-fingers pressed along her temples and she exhaled in a rush.  He stroked in slow swipes, rubbing circles into the aching parts of her skull. His hands were long enough that he had a good reach and could get to the sore parts under her horns. Damara had not expected to purr, but she allowed herself to show him that his touches were good. Tempting as it was to let him do all of the work - she had earned that much at least - it was more fun to touch and be touched. 

Pressing a hand along his jaw and smoothing it up into the weight of his hair, the fields of their psi had a moment of aligning. Sparks shimmered and flared, the reds of his field glowing nova-bright and then falling into harmony with her own. Smiling at him, she opened her eyes to watch his face. “Inner or outer horns?” 

Sticking his tongue between his lips she could see a subtle slit to it. One mystery solved. Grinning at her he dipped his head down. “Both. If you can handle that?” 

“I can handle everything.” Buzzing in amusement, she brushed the whole of her hands along the small set, giving them a tweak and a twist. The rolling chitter she received for her efforts encouraged the rest. Brushing the pads of her forefingers along the longer set, she stroked around the bases. That was where there was the most tension on her own head and perhaps it was a stress point that he shared. The relaxation of the muscles around his eyes told her she had succeeded. 

“Yesthhhh~” The affirmative slurred into a hiss. Psii slit his eyes in delight. 

By mutual agreement they curled closer. The prickle-warmth of Psii’s fields bathed her skin. Perhaps it was long practice or just a difference in how they had used their gifts, but she did not project nearly as much as he did. It was not a bad sensation by any means. 

Psii palmed her horns, snaking his fingers slowly along the base of her skull and down to the nape of her neck. He paused just above it, peering up at her curiously. 

“You weren’t afraid before, don’t get shy now.” His fingers curled down and kneaded into the muscles of her neck and shoulders. Groaning, she rested her forehead against his chest. 

“You have big horns.” His breath moved through her hair. 

“The much better to gore you with.” 

“Not hot.” He laughed near her aurals. “If you are intending to put me at ease that is not the way to do it. And I said big horns, I did not say the biggest.” 

Pinching at his side lightly she accepted the zap that was delivered as a deterrent. “I’m used to being contrary.” Lethargy was spreading through her and slowing her down. Stalled on his horns, Damara idly held them, brushing her thumbs along the tips of the smaller set. 

“You’re good at this.” Remembering that she had a part to play in this situation she smoothed her hands down to his face papping with varying intensities until she could see him react with it. 

“Had a lot of time... to fantasize.” Psii slipped an arm around her waist, curling around her. “And remember.” Resting his chin on top of her head and offering her his throat, he purred. It was a deep and bassy sound, something she could feel in her bones. “You’re soft.” The murmured statement was barely audible over the rolling vibrations of his pleasure. 

“I was designed for pleasure.” Maybe it had been too long since she had last allowed someone to touch her like this. The two of them fell into a pale daze quickly, purrs falling into harmony and sychronizing. Time passed in a fuzzy daze until the attention-chime at Psii’s station interrupted their topor. 

Not bothering to move, Psii listened to the audio feed. Roxy’s warm voice came over the workstation. 

“Hey! It’s Roxy. I just wanted to know if Damara was in with you. She’s not in your room and I hadn’t seen her anywhere else. Thanks.” 

Wiggling brows at her he glanced down. “What do you say kittentits?” 

“I say you’re more vulgar than me. We should snap a picture.” Pale-drunk and fuzzy around the edges, Damara floated a tablet over to hover above them. Psii leered up and she grinned as well. Snapping a candid she sent it and went back to drowsing. 

A text came back shortly. 

tG: LOL

tG: have fun you two

tG: tell us if you need anything or want to have some more quiet time

Quiet time sounded like just the right thing.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to QuietServal for all of the beta help. You are the hero of this work and without you it would not have happened!


End file.
